AHC: Saner, Less Evil Axis That's Still Axis

[MerryPrankster]

Inspired by this post I made in the "Fewer WWII Civilian Casualties" thread...

*A right-wing revanchist but non-psychotic-ideologue Germany might invade Poland for the Corridor and fight OTL's Western and Scandinavian campaigns to make sure they keep it. Invading the USSR is harder, but they could have a falling-out over the division of Poland or Not-Hitler could decide to launch a pre-emptive strike on Stalin for reasons other than LEBENSRAUM!1!1!

Without Nazism there's drastically less anti-Semitism and anti-Slavic racism, so there's no Holocaust and the campaign against the USSR is less brutal. It might also be a lot shorter--either Not-Hitler is content with setting up a puppet Ukraine 1918-style, which would deprive the Soviets of much of their heavy industry and the grain they exported to fund it and push the Soviets back, or the Wehrmacht is carried to Moscow by anti-Stalin Soviets who haven't been tyrannized into jumping back into Uncle Joe's arms.

(The latter might be really pushing it, as there's still the "foreign invader" problem and the fact the Soviet public might still love Communism even if they're not fans of Stalin. For all his horrors, there were still a LOT of people who believed in that whole "work hard to build a new society" thing.)

*At some point the Japanese manage to get their junior officer corps under control, but a lot of the damage has already been done--i.e. Manchuria is under Japanese control and possibly some of the earlier incidents have happened. Perhaps a harsher response to this that neuters the Japanese military's extremist elements. Sino-Japanese War, but on a different timetable--perhaps the Chinese spend years building up and attack Manchuria. Stronger Nationalists mean no epic Japanese victories and the atrocities they made possible (i.e. the Rape of Nanking), even if neutralizing the junior officers doesn't get rid of the brutalization of the lower ranks.

Now, getting the US involved in both of these wars--which helped make them World Wars as opposed to the Second Great War or the Second Sino-Japanese War--without flaming maniac ideologues at the helm of the *Axis is trickier but might still be doable.

*The US still has interests in China and won't approve of Japan closing the Open Door, although there won't be as much popular outrage without the Rape of Nanking or some equivalent. There could still be a Pearl Harbor attack, since Yammamoto and friends know time is against them and only something radical like that MIGHT ensure victory.

However, with saner leadership in Tokyo and (possibly) a less brutalized soldiery, you might avoid things like the Bataan Death March and other Japanese war crimes, which encouraged American soldiers to retaliate and made the Pacific War so brutal. If the Japanese military retains its WWI respect for prisoners and general (relative) pleasantness, the US might not be willing to fight a war unto death even with Pearl Harbor.

*The US would support Britain against a return of "Prussianism," the Junkers, etc. During the war a lot of people thought Hitler was a puppet of the WWI villains, so even without the horrors of fascism, the exodus of Jewish and other refugees, etc., there might still be hostility toward a revanchist Germany. A few Reuben James type incidents and the US and Germany are at war.

How do we get something like this to happen? Having the Japanese government hang everyone involved in the May 15 Incident might be a good POD to have a saner Japan that's still provoked China against it, but it's pretty late for Europe.

I do remember reading somewhere here there were millions of Germans willing to fight the Nazis as late as 1932-33, but the other parties lacked the spine. Maybe the leader of the Communist Party grows a brain, defies Stalin, and makes common cause with the Social Democrats. The Nazis go berserk, street fighting breaks out all over the country, and the Army has to "restore order." This they do--and in the process the leadership of the major German parties are killed and/or imprisoned--and whomever takes power in the aftermath (probably a military figure or puppet thereof) is our "Not Hitler."

However, someone who doesn't have Hitler's itch to rule over Slavs isn't going to take Bohemia and Moravia after promising not to make any more claims, which paved the way for Britain and France to declare war for Poland. That makes getting a war between the Western Allies and Germany tricky.

 

[Nae'Blis]

I think the best way for a late defeat of Hitler is to have the Nazis be attacked from the right, have Hugenberg and the National Front abandon their coalition with Hitler and decide to overthrow him. You need something to convince them that civil war is worth it though, an unwillingness to stomach civil war is why the right ultimately gave into Hitler.

Anyway 1933 saw the peak of the Steel Helmets' numbers, they were a fairly reactionary group that would probably side with the Nationalists, they also had a lot of 'social fascists' from the recently closed Reichsbanners so they would be ready to fight the Nazis fairly enthusiastically. If this is done with the blessing of president Hindenburg (as it would basically have to be) then the army would also pitch in, the Nazis would probably lose although it would take a year or two. The Communists would probably wait it out, for the inevitable collapse of this last gasp reactionary system, which would probably end in them being rounded up by the post civil war authorities who would probably restore the monarchy in a year or two. Probably with the Kaiser's heir, if the Kaiser refuses to abdicate the restoration would probably be delayed.

 

[MerryPrankster]

I looked up Hugenberg on the Almighty Wiki and apparently there was talk of Schleicher launching a military coup, with several of his allies being removed from the military.

The article on he himself has this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Schleicher#Political_misstep

This might preserve his government. There's also an earlier incident where he made a joke that offended Von Hindenberg's son and cost him access to the father. This could keep him in power without a coup.

Schleicher was part of the group that wanted to cooperate with the USSR to undermine Versailles and Hitler said he was killed because he wanted to continue Rapallo.

He's pretty militarist and totalitarian and seemed to like the Nazis, but he also intended to destroy them by manipulating their internal feuds.

Could he be Not-Hitler? If there needs to be an Eastern Front, Stalin's purges or Stalin "outliving his usefulness" in Schelicher's eyes after the apparent defeat of Western Europe might be a good reason.

 

[Baconheimer]

I think if you had a Germany that was more along the lines of Italy, maybe aligned with Hungary, you could possibly have an Axis regarded as more respectable enemies.

 

[kclcmdr]

I think if you had a Germany that was more along the lines of Italy, maybe aligned with Hungary, you could possibly have an Axis regarded as more respectable enemies.

And if Germany can convince Poland to join their Anticom pact against the Soviet Union and get the Three Baltic States as associate members....

then add Romania and Hungary and later on Finland as Stalin's Soviet Union continues to demand land for buffer zones against his fear of a German-lead coalition against him and his Soviet state.....

 

[MerryPrankster]

If our hypothetical Not-Hitler doesn't have lebensraum fantasies (or more sane ones, like a "1918 Ukraine" with German settlers), it might be easier to try to get Poland on board than it was with Hitler.

Thing is, the only way Poland is going to get a seaport if they give back Danzig would be at the expense of Lithuania and might require building an entirely new city. If we want something resembling OTL's WWII with Not-Hitler, things have to go pear-shaped and the Western Allies have to back Poland.

Someone like Schleicher might be willing to do something like M-R, given how he was a Rapallo supporter. The original M-R involved a German Lithuania, but that was renegotiated. Schleicher might rearrange the border to his taste after dividing up Eastern Europe with Stalin rather than doing OTL's Nazi thing.

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

Thing is, the only way Poland is going to get a seaport if they give back Danzig would be at the expense of Lithuania and might require building an entirely new city. If we want something resembling OTL's WWII with Not-Hitler, things have to go pear-shaped and the Western Allies have to back Poland.

Poland built Gdynia because Danzig dockers weren't too enthusiast to unload bullet for the Polish Army.

 

[AudieonAHCom]

Take out these Guys:

-Mussolini(Replace him with Balbo)
-Hitler(Replace him with Ernest Rohm)
-Franco(Replace him with Mola)


and few other bullets to Stalin's head,Successful Zangara assassination..and voila,an entirely new WW2.

 

[Vexacus]

Replace the Imperial Japanese military that favoured attacking the US with the ones that favoured the "attack North" plan and there is a good chance that there would not have been the Pearl Harbour attack

 

[Snaut]

Thing is, the only way Poland is going to get a seaport if they give back Danzig would be at the expense of Lithuania and might require building an entirely new city. If we want something resembling OTL's WWII with Not-Hitler, things have to go pear-shaped and the Western Allies have to back Poland.

Lithuania had no adequate port facilities, nor did it even sit close to the mouth of the Vistula where Polish trade passed. Building a port in Lithuania was possible, but its construction would be longer and more expensive then Gdynia's. And placing Poland's principal seaport there would also involve some form of permanent occupation of Lithuania with all the joy it would entail, for Poland could not afford to risk losing access to it.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Replace the Imperial Japanese military that favoured attacking the US with the ones that favoured the "attack North" plan and there is a good chance that there would not have been the Pearl Harbour attack

Of course, the Japanese would then rapidly collapse economically seeing as the Soviet Far East does not have the resources they need and the Japanese capability to march the entirety of Siberia to reach those locations which do have the resources they need amount to... nothing.

 

[UncleDynamite]

-Hitler(Replace him with Ernest Rohm)

Would Roehm really have been "less evil" than Hitler by any meaningful standard? He was certainly different, but he did lead the SA, the vanguard of anti-Semitism among the Nazi Party before it came into power. It was Brownshirt goons from Roehm's SA that smashed Jewish businesses and assaulted Jews in the street(not that any factions of the Nazi Party weren't anti-semitic, but the SA certainly was and Roehm was a part of that).

Considering that the OP is specifcally about an expansionist Germany that has none of the racial garbage that OTL's Nazi Germany did, I don't see how Roehm would have changed Nazi attitudes towards those considered "undesireable" by the Nazis in OTL.

 

[Kung Fucious]

Would Roehm really have been "less evil" than Hitler by any meaningful standard? He was certainly different, but he did lead the SA, the vanguard of anti-Semitism among the Nazi Party before it came into power. It was Brownshirt goons from Roehm's SA that smashed Jewish businesses and assaulted Jews in the street(not that any factions of the Nazi Party weren't anti-semitic, but the SA certainly was and Roehm was a part of that).

Considering that the OP is specifcally about an expansionist Germany that has none of the racial garbage that OTL's Nazi Germany did, I don't see how Roehm would have changed Nazi attitudes towards those considered "undesireable" by the Nazis in OTL.

Rohm was an anti-semitic asshole, but would he have been a genocidally murderous anti-semitic asshole? It's really a tossup, and I don't know enough about the guy to make a call (though my gut is tending towards a soft "no", though he'd undoubtedly make life miserable for Germany's Jews).

As for the OP, this is verging into a German WW2-wank but with "Notzi's", so you don't have to feel bad for supporting them. If I'm just spitballing, a few nudges here and there get a far-right/Fascist party in control of Germany, who buddy's up with Poland to get a buffer against the USSR. Maybe they decide to pull a reverse of WW2, going after Stalin first and then turning their attention Westward to France and the UK. Since they're not bugfuck crazy like the Nazi's (just generic off the shelf Fascist assholes) they've got a slightly easier time invading the USSR, but they since they spent the pre-war years blatantly assembling an anti-Soviet *Axis Stalin's better prepared, so it's almost a wash. No idea how the Western front goes, someone else can fill that in.

As for Japan, getting Japan to be a "lighter and softer" version of it's WW2 is a lot harder to untangle than Germany.

 

[lukedalton]

The problem with Balbo is that with him at the helm, yes Italy will be probably better prepared for a war (at least he will go for his reform so we will have less division but with better equipment and theoretically better officer and better training) but there is the very strong possibility that he will not alignin the nation with the Axis and try to keep an alliance with the British.

 

[UncleDynamite]

Rohm was an anti-semitic asshole, but would he have been a genocidally murderous anti-semitic asshole? It's really a tossup, and I don't know enough about the guy to make a call (though my gut is tending towards a soft "no", though he'd undoubtedly make life miserable for Germany's Jews).

I don't think we'll ever know for sure. I doubt Roehm would enact a Final Solution as per OTL, rather most of the *Holocaust would focus on Einsatzgruppen and driving Jews out of Germany and areas occupied by Germany, considering the limited rescources a Strasserist Germany would probably have.

Even that however, would violate the OP.

 

[Kung Fucious]

I don't think we'll ever know for sure. I doubt Roehm would enact a Final Solution as per OTL, rather most of the *Holocaust would focus on Einsatzgruppen and driving Jews out of Germany and areas occupied by Germany, considering the limited rescources a Strasserist Germany would probably have.

Even that however, would violate the OP.

Yeah, I think a Rohm-run Nazi Germany would make life for German Jew's fairly terrible (we'd probably still see the Kindertransport, ghetto's, property confiscation and all that), but I don't think he'd tip over into outright mass murder (though they might go so far as to pull a Holdomar like starvation campaign).

In all honesty, I think it's pretty hard to stick to the OP, since a "Saner, less evil Axis" isn't really the Axis. Kicking off something like WW2 required people crazy enough to do it, and you're just not going to get that with Authoritarian-but-not-crazy people running the show in Germany and Japan. You can certainly come up with an *Axis that is "less evil" than OTL's, but that's because OTL Axis was about as evil as you could get.

Then again, it might be because I have a personal bias against threads/WI/TL's like this, where you've got a WW2 that's fairly close to OTL's but without all that nasty Nazi business, so it's just cool Panzer's vs. T-34's with no icky feelings to get in the way.

 

[UncleDynamite]

Yeah, I think a Rohm-run Nazi Germany would make life for German Jew's fairly terrible (we'd probably still see the Kindertransport, ghetto's, property confiscation and all that), but I don't think he'd tip over into outright mass murder (though they might go so far as to pull a Holdomar like starvation campaign).

In all honesty, I think it's pretty hard to stick to the OP, since a "Saner, less evil Axis" isn't really the Axis. Kicking off something like WW2 required people crazy enough to do it, and you're just not going to get that with Authoritarian-but-not-crazy people running the show in Germany and Japan. You can certainly come up with an *Axis that is "less evil" than OTL's, but that's because OTL Axis was about as evil as you could get.

Then again, it might be because I have a personal bias against threads/WI/TL's like this, where you've got a WW2 that's fairly close to OTL's but without all that nasty Nazi business, so it's just cool Panzer's vs. T-34's with no icky feelings to get in the way.

Yeah, with a sane, morally grey 'Axis', we wouldn't have WWII. We'd have the German-Polish War or the German-French War, with maybe a German-Soviet War a few years later if the Germans win.

 

[Nae'Blis]

The problem with Balbo is that with him at the helm, yes Italy will be probably better prepared for a war (at least he will go for his reform so we will have less division but with better equipment and theoretically better officer and better training) but there is the very strong possibility that he will not alignin the nation with the Axis and try to keep an alliance with the British.

That was Mussolini's default too though. The fact is Britain is likely to always choose France over Italy.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Good to see some more interest in TTL...

I don't think we'll ever know for sure. I doubt Roehm would enact a Final Solution as per OTL, rather most of the *Holocaust would focus on Einsatzgruppen and driving Jews out of Germany and areas occupied by Germany, considering the limited rescources a Strasserist Germany would probably have.

Even that however, would violate the OP.

As the OP, I'm willing to have Schleicher as a Fuhrer--and based on the Wikipedia article he'd have been one, with his dislike for democracy and his desire for some kind of military-totalitarian regime even if (according to some Jewish stuff I've read online) he didn't have the hate-on for Jews like Hitler did. Even "Notzis" are still going to be murderous despotic pricks.

About Rohm, he could satisfy the OP on the "less brutal" part, but given his faction of the Nazis' leftism, there's less grounds for war with the USSR and he doesn't seem like someone the Junkers, the industrialists, etc. would tolerate. My main concern with the OP was something resembling OTL's Axis but less murderous and saner. Thus there'd still be war with the USSR and a quasi-socialist Germany might not go that far.

In all honesty, I think it's pretty hard to stick to the OP, since a "Saner, less evil Axis" isn't really the Axis. Kicking off something like WW2 required people crazy enough to do it, and you're just not going to get that with Authoritarian-but-not-crazy people running the show in Germany and Japan. You can certainly come up with an *Axis that is "less evil" than OTL's, but that's because OTL Axis was about as evil as you could get.

Then again, it might be because I have a personal bias against threads/WI/TL's like this, where you've got a WW2 that's fairly close to OTL's but without all that nasty Nazi business, so it's just cool Panzer's vs. T-34's with no icky feelings to get in the way.

Well, you still have the crazy Japanese junior officers at the beginning of the TL--it's just they get crushed after they get Manchuria for Japan. The democratic Japanese government still has to deal with the consequences of their actions--and since they won't give up Manchuria, this means there's going to be a Sino-Japanese War sooner or later.

(Of course, too much "later" and we don't get a Pacific War alongside the European War. However, this indicates Chiang Kai-Shek thought the Japanese were overextended in 1937 and now was the time to strike. He might act later, but perhaps not too late.)

And the Wikipedia article on Schleicher indicates that some kind of insane "total war" mentality was rampant in the German military at the time, so you don't need Hitler levels of loony to get a big war even if the geopoltical goals aren't as extreme.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Lithuania had no adequate port facilities, nor did it even sit close to the mouth of the Vistula where Polish trade passed. Building a port in Lithuania was possible, but its construction would be longer and more expensive then Gdynia's. And placing Poland's principal seaport there would also involve some form of permanent occupation of Lithuania with all the joy it would entail, for Poland could not afford to risk losing access to it.

Maybe this is why in TTL Poland rejects a "you give us Danzig and we help you conquer Lithuania and build a new port"--they recognize how bad an idea this is.

And then Not-Hitler invades...